Standard decorations may be bland and uninspiring. People may wish to incorporate many audio and visual dynamics to their decorations rather than just setting up static decorations or lights, decorating a Christmas tree, and the like. However, most decorations that are offered in the market are merely strings of lights or signs that are static and often remain a single color or single illumination pattern. As a result, such decorations may not provide much aesthetic appeal and may fail to draw attention to a home or business.
The only attempts that Applicant is aware of to solve this problem are to provide a connection hub, such as a USB hub or other connection switch. The inadequacy with these types of solutions include a separate discrete cable that is required to be connected to each device, the processing speed that may become an issue when large amounts of data (steaming video or large data files) are being loaded to a device or devices, and the increased amount of electrical power required for the total number of devices connected to the main USB hub or switch. Presently, in order to connect multiple audio and visual devices together, people will need to utilize a single connection hub such as a computer or other peripheral device. However, connecting multiple devices to one main electronic device or computer can impact processing performance and it also may not be able to deliver the needed electrical power load to all devices connected.
FIG. 2 illustrates problems with typical connector hub technology. As shown, there is a view of the typical connector hub 56 that shows multiple ports 57-65. Each port 57-65 must connect to a cable 66-74 in order to communicate with each of the devices shown 35-43. The typical USB connector hub 56 also delivers only 5 volts at 500 milliamps per port, and is thus not capable of delivering more power to operate actuators, lights and other processing systems from any single port. A USB hub also may slow processing speeds. This means that loading programs and large amounts of data may take minutes and not seconds. Often, the multiple cables that are required to connect each device to a hub become tangled or occupy unnecessary space along a desk top or area near the connected devices 35-43.
Therefore, there exists a need for an “intelligent” or “smart” electronic system that can introduce visually stunning pictures, artistic graphics, video, decorative lights, other electronic devices (that may include electrically mechanized devices), and audio that does not negatively affect performance of the main system to which they are connected. It would be desirable to have an electronic decoration system including a cable having a plurality of ports that allows a user to provide a more advanced, interesting, independent, and custom decoration, with each decoration being unique, and each decoration being capable of independent control from other decorations plugged into other ports of a cable. The decoration system interacts with the end-user by using feedback sensors, or peripheral inputs/outputs such as microphones, cameras, and audio. Further, it would be desirable to have an electronic decoration system that allows the user to replace some decoration(s)/device(s), or reprogram a particular decoration(s)/device(s), or load different data to particular decoration(s)/device(s) within the same electrically connected cable or decoration string if desired.